It seems like my low light shootout will be going ahead and I’ve been lucky enough to secure the support of some fantastic companies and individuals to help me carry out this low light test.

Kodak Australia firstly, have stepped in and will be furnishing me with some 35mm and Super 16 film stock.

Lemac and Panavision Australia will be supplying me with cameras and lenses for testing and I really am very grateful to them both for helping me out.

The fabulous crew at Deluxe Melbourne will be processing my film and doing all the post production grading, as well as the film finish and DCP.

Inspiration Studio’s have also very kindly offered to help out with the onset data wrangling work for all these cameras.

Testing anything is always a difficult thing to asses. And it’s hard when you make the test available to others because what I see as being important to look for won’t necessarily be what others look for in a test.

I for one, don’t especially like seeing resolution charts. Unless I’m specifically testing the lenses in pre production on a show, I do find them pretty meaningless. Aside from the testing methodologies always being problematic, measured resolution isn’t really the best way to asses and image. I’m sure Roger Deakins’ de-constructed lens on Jesse James would fare very poorly in a resolution test but it looked gorgeous in the hands of a master.

What I do want to see is real world results…how does this look in a real world situation ? How will this perform in a situation that I’m likely to encounter on a real working set ?

This is what I’m keen on. Not just the test result, but what was required to get that result on set. I’m also auditioning or testing the actual process itself. And in a way, I’m keen to test a small crew shooting methodology. What kind of results can be had shooting available light for a big screen finish with a small crew ? How manageable are each of these cameras ? How quickly can I react on set to changing situations ?

This is why it’s important to me to have actors and a scripted scene to shoot.

Once the scene is written, that we’ll then be able to work on a plan for coverage. Im hoping it’s informed by having an actual outcome in mind, a visual look that we’ll be aspiring to. Of course, that comes from the script itself. Ideally though, the coverage approach will also allow for a couple of shooting styles, and framings, just to make sure we get to mix it up a bit.